Citizens Assemble!

 

Left Overs

% Iain Reeve, OP Columnist

5

rial to be covered on your final exams,

 

o, let me guess—all of you have
completed your essays and labs,

have a good handle on all the mate-

and, feeling a loss, are just dying for a
chance to engage yourselves in several
more agonizing hours of heavy mental
activity. No? Well, me neither. But unfor-

tunately one of us has to write a political

column, so here I go. Hopefully, you can
learn from my work. The body of work I
am referring to is the reading of the
Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform’s
recommendation of a single transferable
vote system. If you have no clue what ’m
yammering on about than sit back, grab a
coffee, and let me tell you a story.

You see, children, four years ago, when
Gordon Campbell and his merry band of
Liberals were campaigning against the
NDP, they made one rather impressive
campaign promise. They promised the
voters of BC that they would set up a cit-
izens’ assembly made up of women and

March 23/2005

\

men from every riding in this great
province of ours. They would then travel
the land and try to find out all the brilliant
ideas the common folk had on how to
reform the electoral system here in BC.
They would pick one of these ideas and it
would be put to referendum in the next
federal election, which is fast approaching.

After the public dismantling of the
NDP—also known as the Liberal majori-
ty win—the Liberals did something
unexpected and actually delivered on this
promise. Council members were gathered,
meetings were set up, and ideas—good,
bad, and downright loony

 

were pro-
posed, In the end, the Council settled on
the STV system, similar to the one used in
Ireland. Though, as we may find, those
delightful folk who brought us Lucky
Charms and heavy drinking may not have
been on the ball on this one.

If you want to get up to date on exact-
ly how the system works, please consult
www.citizensassembly.be.ca. ’m just here

 

to commend/condemn it. So let’s get to
it.

The system has many benefits. It is
inherently more representative than the
current “first past the post” system, and
makes it more likely that a citizen can go
talk to a representative of the party they
voted for. The need to focus on regional
representation forces the candidates to
pay more attention locally. It ensures that
we will never see the absurd discrepancies
that exist between popular vote and seat
representation that we have had the past
two elections in BC. Lastly, it simply
ensures that your vote will not be wasted.
It lets people shy away from strategic vot-

ing, These are all good things. But it ain’t
all good, kids.

I have two major gripes with this sys-
tem. First off, is the confusion of how the
vote is calculated. After sitting down with
the Citizens’ Assembly report for a while,
I managed to mostly suss it out. If your
first-choice candidate either does really
well, or sucks really badly, your vote
moves down to your next choice and so
on. It’s hard for most to understand. For
Joe BeCee, it will basically seem like he
votes, some magic fairies perform an elab-
orate ritual in a hidden cave somewhere,
and candidates are elected. In a province
where the system’s primary saving grace is
its simplicity, this may not fly. The second

 

major problem is that, while I appreciate
the benefits that come with lumping the
constituencies together, having to elect
seven MPs’ is going to suck balls. Most
people in this province have trouble sit-
ting down and learning about three or
four candidates let alone 25.

So, what do I predict in this debacle? I
predict that I will vote yes, because I like
to experiment. I think opening democracy
to change is a good precedent; we need to
be more open to changing this big
dinosaur of an institution. Do I think it
will pass, though? Heck no! People either
don’t know, don’t care, or don’t agree with
me. But the thought was nice.

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